“I hate her so bad. She is ugly stupid bitch!” “I wanna shoot her in the face with a shotgun,” “I want to do something terrible to the person who put this up… like maybe burn them at the stake.” These are just a few of the comments posted on the YouTube video of Rebecca Black’s song Friday.
Malicious, hurtful and asinine comments like these are part of a wider trend in internet behaviour and the online community known as ‘Trolling.’ The bizarre and senseless craze is defined as someone anonymously posting spiteful, offensive and insulting comments either directly to another person or to provoke a reaction from a wider audience on an open webpage.
This virtual monster has reared its head in the media this year, not only with the vile comments and death threats posted to Rebecca Black, but with the recent conviction of Sean Duffy.
Art: Rebecca Cooke
Duffy was jailed for posting vile abuse on the Facebook pages of two teenage girls who died earlier this year. On the Facebook page of one of his victims, Natasha MacBryde who committed suicide on Valentine’s Day this year, Duffy posted “Help me Mummy, it’s hot in hell,” impersonating the teenage girl.
An unsettling fact about the behaviour of online ‘Trolls,’ is that it is entirely unprovoked. Their comments and posts are, according to psychologists, nothing more than a desperate bid to win the attention and reactions of anyone who stumbles upon their slurry of abuse.
One person who certainly has an opinion about these virtual beasts is Dr. Emma Short, co-director at the National Centre for Cyberstalking Research. Short claims that the internet provides a mask and subsequent anonymity which prompts the trolls to recoil from their proverbial hiding places and start posting their hateful comments.
She says, “In any environment where you think you’re not seen and you think you won’t be punished, people behave in a more disinhibited way.”
This is precisely the issue which prompted the father of Natasha MacBryde to publicly criticise Facebook – the networking site where his daughter was trolled.
He said outside court during Duffy’s trial, “Facebook is very hard to get hold of in this situation, you can report these things but there’s no one to actually speak to.”
Considering this it’s evident that there needs to be a tougher line taken by social networking sites against these attention seeking creatures. An authoritarian presence online may serve to deter such behaviour.
The controversy which surrounded the case of Sean Duffy and his fellow trolls was exacerbated by the public’s bewilderment as to what would cause someone to stoop to such depths. Duffy, an Asperger’s sufferer, was believed to have posted the comments to attract attention.
In “How to Avoid the Trolls: A Users Guide to the Internet,” posted on Cracked.com a warning reads, “Do Not Feed the Trolls: They feed off of negative vibes.” It appears the attention surrounding the internet abusers is exactly what fuels their abhorrent outbursts.
Similarly Rebecca Black’s victimisation at the hand of the trolls came after the release of her single Friday, which prompted millions of responses that condemned her to torture, death and ill will.
However, it could be argued that the trolls who targeted Rebecca Black wanted more than just attention, but to intentionally disseminate hatred throughout the online community. There even exists a webpage solely dedicated to trolling her, which instructs people to flag her video as “animal abuse,” and then, “Enjoy the infinite amount of dislikes and spread the hate around the world.”
Furthermore with the proliferation of social networking sites and the launch of Google+, a new rival for Facebook, it seems that more and more outlets for this disturbing behaviour are becoming available.
For some this is a distressing notion as victim of Trolling Claire* reveals. Claire, a student at the University of Sheffield, found her Facebook account being continually trolled by an unknown person for weeks.
“At first I thought it was just a joke, granted a twisted one, a prank being played by my friends when I saw someone had posted ‘I hope you burn you slag’ on my wall,” she says.
“I tried to shrug it off but similar comments kept resurfacing and it was really starting to upset me.
“At one point I actually thought it might be someone who had a personal vendetta against me with some of the stuff that they were saying. Now I think it was just someone saying stuff to get attention. To be honest it was humiliating.”
Claire decided that she wasn’t going to be a victim anymore. “After checking out their Facebook account and seeing it was very vague I decided to report it to Facebook support,” she says.
“After a couple of days the account had been closed, but I still check for similar posts every now and then.”
Instances like the abuse Claire was subjected to are becoming increasingly common for celebrities too. In a recent trolling scandal, Cher Lloyd, a former X Factor hopeful received a menacing death threat on her Twitter page in response to a birthday message for her mother. The troll demanded, “Shut the fuck up before I kill your mum in front of you.”
Lloyd afterwards made a public statement about how punishments for internet bullying are insufficient, if not non-existent and that more strict regulations should be imposed.
Ultimately, it seems fair to state that there is no place for such palpable viciousness online and sites like Twitter and Facebook, whilst being hijacked as outlets for the trolls are not intended for such a cruel purpose. As Duffy’s conviction proves, those who troll should be prepared to pay the toll be it a costly fine or a jail sentence.
*Name has been changed to protect interviewees identity.